Attawapiskat, or Attawapiskat First Nation, is an isolated Cree First Nation located in Kenora District in northern Ontario, Canada, at the mouth of the Attawapiskat River near the west coast of James Bay. The First Nation controls the reserves at Attawapiskat 91 and Attawapiskat 91A, established upon the community's signing of Treaty 9 in 1930. The traditional territory of Attawapiskat extends beyond its current location up the James Bay coast to Hudson Bay and hundreds of kilometres inland along river tributaries.
The people of Attawapiskat maintain some knowledge of their ancestral Swampy Cree language and some still participate in subsistence living, hunting in the land around the reserves. However, Attawapiskat has access to modern amenities including telecommunications services and a hospital, as well as an elementary and high school. The community is connected to other towns along the shore of James Bay by the seasonal ice road constructed each December, linking it to Kashechewan, Fort Albany, and Moosonee. The now-closed Victor Diamond Mine is located close to the community.
Attawapiskat has received national media attention for several crises, including a crisis of inadequate and insufficient housing, a lack of clean drinking water, and a youth suicide crisis.
Etymology The name Attawapiskat is an anglicisation of the Swampy Cree phrase (), which means "it is open and rocky," as a description of the Attawapiskat River valley.
Another explanation by a community member gives the meaning of "Kattawapiskak Seepee" as "river between the rocks."
History
The people of Attawapiskat are Mushkegowuk, also known as Swampy Cree or Hudson Bay Lowland Cree. Local oral history and documentation in the archives of the Hudson's Bay Company attests that ancestors of the present-day inhabitants of Attawapiskat had occupied an area extending from the Kapiskau River in the south, to Cape Henrietta Maria (the point where the coasts of Hudson's Bay and James Bay meet) in the north, and from Akimiski Island in the east to Mississa Lake in the west. Across this vast range, family units came together to form small bands, which have been identified by anthropologists according to the river basins they tended to occupy. According to John J. Honigmann, these included the Sutton River (which he calls "Namee'ko River") people and the Winisk Indians inland of Cape Henrietta Maria, and then from north to south the Lakitusaki River (aka "Lake"), Opinnigau, Attawapiskat, Lawashi, and Kapiskau bands. Honigmann identified these loosely defined bands as "Attawapiskat Indians" in his 1956 ethnographic study of Attawapiskat. Prior to an intensification of the coastal population in the fur trade era, Honigmann theorizes that the Attawapiskat people lived more inland, due to their reliance on the toboggan rather than the sled for transportation.
The site of the present settlement at the mouth of the Attawapiskat River (the reserve known officially as Attawapiskat 91A) has for centuries been a gathering place for the Mushkegowuk. Attawapiskat was originally a seasonal camp that the Cree visited only in the spring and summer to take advantage of the bountiful fishing on a major river of James Bay. Historically, in the wintertime, families moved to more dispersed sites along the coast, inland or on Akimiski Island, where they trapped, hunted, and gathered roots, fruit and nuts. This way of life has persisted at least as recently as the 1950s, with family groups dispersing across the territory beginning in the autumn.
Fur trade era
By 1693, a permanent trading post controlled by the British Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) had been established at Fort Albany, marking the beginning of prolonged contact between the people of the area and Europeans, part of the European colonization of the Americas. This contact introduced the commercial fur trapping economy to the area. However, the influence of Europeans in Fort Albany likely did not extend to north of the Attawapiskat River until the early nineteenth century.
After brief contact with some Jesuit missionaries during the period of French control of Fort Albany (1686-1693), the region did not see any attempts at christianization until 1848, when the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate began making regular visits to Fort Albany, followed in 1852 by an Anglican minister from Moosonee. In 1853, the French-speaking Catholic Oblates travelled to the Kapiskau River, and began regularly visiting Attawapiskat soon after. The missionaries brought Cree syllabics to the community, which led to high literacy rates in Cree as of the 1940s. In 1893, the Oblates built a Catholic church in Attawapiskat, and a residence for their missionaries in 1912. They established St. Anne's Indian Residential School in 1902 in Fort Albany, which children from Attawapiskat attended. An Anglican church was built on Akimiski Island between 1919 and 1922 before being abandoned and another built at the far west end of Attawapiskat by 1928, which was itself eventually abandoned due to lack of attendance.
In 1894, HBC established a post in the area, "probably around the estuary of the Ekwan River," according to Honigmann. Revillon Frères, a French competitor to HBC, built their own store at Attawapiskat in 1902. The competition between these two trading companies included extravagant incentives for trappers, possibly leading to overhunting of the region's fur bearing animals. The Revillon Frères store was eventually absorbed by HBC in 1936.
According to Honigmann, in 1914-15, over half a dozen men from Attawapiskat joined the army and wound up cutting timber for sawmills in England and Scotland during World War I. In 1917, 24 young men from the community were signed up by a recruiter for the Canadian Expeditionary Force, without anyone in the community knowing entirely what they had agreed to when the recruiter arrived in town.
Around 1922, in November, "an epidemic of an unknown respiratory disease" broke out, which killed many people in Attawapiskat, due in part to weather conditions and the lack of radio communication and ability to call for medical assistance.
1928 was a year particularly noted for food scarcity in Attawapiskat, with the countryside largely depleted. One resident interviewed later by Honigmann reported that help was only provided by the Indian Agent if a man was so ill he couldn't stand, calling the people of Attawapiskat "lazy" if they asked for food.
Treaty No. 9 On August 1, 1930, Attawapiskat was part of the adhesion to Treaty 9 with the governments of Canada and Ontario. Although Treaty 9 was originally signed in the years 1905 and 1906, those signings only included the communities south of the Albany River, which was then the northern limit of Ontario before it was extended north in 1912. At the time of the initial signing of the treaty, the people of Attawapiskat were included in the Albany band for the purposes of administration. They were separated into their own band in 1929 when the treaty commissioners travelled to deliver their annuity payments. At the time of the 1930 adhesion signing, the commissioners reported that there were 583 "Attawapiskat Indians," led by chief Xavier Chookomoolin and councillors Jacob Chookomoolin, Jacob Gull, and John Nakogee, who met the Treaty Commissioners at the trading post at the mouth of the Albany River. Signing the treaty established the Nation's band government under the Indian Act, and a reserve inland on the Ekwan River, a parallel river north of the Attawapiskat River that drains into James Bay, totalling 104.4 square miles (27,039.48 hectares). According to the treaty commissioner, this site was agreed upon because coastal hunting had been poor in recent years, and that the location would be central for the band's wide-ranging members. As of anthropologist John J. Honigmann's visit in 1948, the site remained unsurveyed, and he suspected the community to "relinquish" it "in favour of a more accessible location."
In response to the scarcity of fur-bearing animals in the early twentieth century, the Hudson's Bay Company established beaver preserves on Attawapiskat territory, namely one north of Kapiskau River and one on Akimiski Island.
1930s to present While nobody from Attawapiskat was recruited to join the army at the outbreak of World War II, according to Honigmann "about a dozen" young people left to work in southern Ontario during the war, several of whom stayed near Acton and Guelph until at least 1948.
In 1943, a measles epidemic broke out in the community, taking the lives of at least 41 children and young people. Two temporary hospitals were established to assist with the outbreak.
According to anthropologist John J. Honigmann writing in the late 1950s, after establishing their own infrastructure near the trading post, members of the mission seem to have taken charge of some of the planning of the modern-day settlement. A loudspeaker located in the church provided announcements to the community. From 1927 to 1960, the mission operated a sawmill. The mission also operated a day school as of 1948 in Attawapiskat proper, with students between the ages of six and fourteen. Mission members were engaged in deciding where houses would be built, draining paths, and instructing workers. This management was criticized by the Indigenous people employed in this work at the time.
Honigmann observed that Attawapiskat in the late 1950s was a "community in which the chiefs and councillors possess practically no power and display little effective leadership," being part of a political system that was imposed on the community and had nothing to do with how the people were used to organizing themselves. The individual chiefs and councillors were frequently bypassed by the Indian Agent as being inefective, since they had been thrust into administrative roles for which they were largely not prepared.
The presence of the existing trading post at the mouth of the Attawapiskat River led to that location being a hub for the community. though people continued to live on the land stretching between Lawashi River and Cape Henrietta Maria at least into the 1950s. The reserve at that site, which contains 235.8 hectares, is Attawapiskat Indian Reserve 91A. Since the 1950s, the town has developed from a settlement of temporary dwellings, such as tents and teepees, to a community with permanent buildings. These were constructed in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The majority of the First Nation members moved to the community as late as the mid-1960s.
The Northern Store took over the operations of the HBC store in the 1980s.
In June and July 2025, to protest the proposed development of the mineral-rich Ring of Fire region and the passage of the One Canadian Economy Act, community members set up camps and planted flags along the river where bridge crossings had been suggested. The protest responds to a lack of government consultation with the First Nations of the region. It is also a way for the families participating to "reassert" their presence on the First Nation's traditional land.
Geography
The main town of Attawapiskat covers of land and is located on the left bank of the Attawapiskat River, inland from the James Bay coastline, on the reserve officially known as Attawapiskat 91A. It is located in the Kenora District within Northwestern Ontario. Timmins, the nearest urban centre, is located approximately south. The town of Moosonee is south of Attawapiskat.
The town is the social and commercial hub of a much larger area, where Attawapiskat people often hunt and occasionally live. These hunting grounds consist of about of Hudson Bay Lowlands, a vast wetland located between the Canadian Shield and James Bay and Hudson Bay.